Until the End of the World (Book 2): And After (25 page)

“So, Dan?” Peter asks, and puts on more espresso.

“So, I’m a horrible person.” The latte sloshes in my stomach. “What was I thinking? Adrian…”

Peter looks up. “Adrian would want you to be happy.”

I watch the flame hiss under the coffee pot. He’s probably right; if Adrian’s watching me, he knows how much I miss him. How much I wanted to join him. He would only smile and wipe my tears away. Maybe that’s the worst part: that someone like that is gone.

“I just needed—I don’t know—someone? Something?” I wrap my arms around my knees and watch the ripples on the lake where the fish have come up for their bug breakfast buffet. “It’s nice to have someone who really loves you, inside and out, you know? Who appreciates the weird things you do, even if they’re slightly crazy-making.”

“I know all about the crazy-making,” Peter says.

I laugh at his long-suffering expression. “Yes, yes you do. More than most. I mean little stuff. Like how Adrian would throw or drop the last bite of food onto his plate, as if it were a grenade about to go off. Most people save the best bite for last, but he’d eat until the last bite and then—BOOM!—done. It killed me every time because who does that?”

“So that’s why you always ate his last bite,” Peter says. “I wondered.”

“You thought I was pilfering his food, didn’t you? What do you people think of me?” I shake my head at his laugh and continue. “And about four times a year, he’d fold all my socks and underwear and arrange them in my drawer in these orderly rows. He’d show it to me like it was this amazing feat and then get all irritated when I wasn’t impressed. But I thought it was sweet how excited he got over that dumb drawer, even though I knew it was going to lead to a lecture on the importance of organization.

“And it used to drive him crazy how I’d get out of his car. He said I used my foot to push the door open. I’d try not to, but I’d forget and there’d be a footprint on the door. He was always like, ‘My car’s already a piece of shit, you don’t have to kick it.’ ”

“I know all about that, too,” Peter says. “You have no idea how many times I wiped your shoeprint off my door.”

I cover my mouth when a huge laugh escapes. “Really? Except your car wasn’t a piece of shit.”

“It was a beautiful piece of German engineering.”

“I’ll get you another. I can afford it now. I’ll trade you for caramel sauce.”

Peter watches me, waiting for more. Now that I’ve opened the floodgates, I can’t stop talking.

“And I miss the silly things. We had an ongoing game where we’d sing an awful song, just to make the other person get it stuck in their head. And we’d act super annoyingly in love, even when we were alone, just to amuse ourselves. It all comes up and smacks me in the back of the head when I least expect it. There are all the big parts of missing someone, but there are a million little parts.”

“I know,” Peter says, and I know he does. He’s spent his whole life missing people. “It’s okay to want that again. It doesn’t take away from what you had with Adrian.”

“It won’t happen again.”

“What won’t happen again? What you had, or last night?”

“Both.”

“Does Dan know that?” Peter asks.

I laugh despite myself. “Do you think I really need to tell
Dan
it was a one night stand? Dan
is
a one night stand.”

“I think he likes you.”

“Dan likes everyone. Name one girl Dan doesn’t at least partially like.”

“You don’t know how easy you are to love,” Peter says with a shake of his head.

“Oh, please. What does that even mean?”

“There’re no games, no craziness. You’re just you. You’re easy to be around.”

Nelly once said everyone’s entitled to one crackup in their lifetime. I’d already used mine, and here I’ve gone and had another. The first was three years. At least this time I’ve whittled it down to around three months. A personal best.

“I’d say I’ve been pretty crazy and difficult to be around.”

“Why must you argue when someone says something nice about you? It’s really annoying.” I hide my smile because that’s another thing that drove Adrian crazy, and Peter’s eyebrows are up at his hairline. “It means that you make it easy to love you. Speaking as someone who was once in love with you, I can attest to that fact.”

“No, you were not.”

“Yeah, I was.” He looks at me intently and then places a cup under the espresso spout. “And you thought I was oblivious.”

I shift in my chair. Maybe he once loved me, but that was a different Peter. For a moment, I wonder what would’ve happened if he’d been this Peter when we met, if there’d been no Adrian, and I can’t say for certain that I wouldn’t have loved him back. But that was a long time ago. I love Peter with all my heart, but it’s the way I love Nelly.

He snorts at what I can only imagine is my deer-caught-in-the-headlights expression. “Don’t worry, I’m not anymore.”

“You totally freaked me out.”

“Sorry. More than sleeping with Dan?”

“No. That’s in the number one freak-out spot.” I sigh. “Thanks for the pep talk, Petey. But as much as I’d love to discuss the wonder that is me, I need to go brush my teeth and get my life together.”

“In that order?” he asks.

“Of course.”

Ana strolls onto the porch and perches on the edge of the table. She yawns and looks at me with interest. “Good morning, Cass. So, how was Dan? I hear he’s really good in bed.”

I kick her from my chair, but she’s undeterred. “Please don’t talk about it. I’m an awful person.”

Peter puts a tiny pot of milk on the stove and waits for it to heat. “No, you’re not. Time is different now. We don’t know how much we have. We never did, but we could pretend. Now we know, and we don’t have the luxury of mourning the way we used to.”

“Yeah,” Ana says. “I’d want Peter to hook up with someone. I wouldn’t even make him wait two months.”

“So, how long do I have to wait?” Peter asks.

“You do whatever you want, baby,” she says with a grin. “But I’m waiting a month, tops.”

“You could find out about Dan for yourself,” Peter says. “No more wondering.”

Ana licks her lips. “Good point. So, maybe a week.” I love to see them tease, but it also makes my heart hurt. Another thing to miss.

“You have nothing to feel guilty about,” Ana says.

I try to believe her. We enjoy our lattes as the sun rises, and by the time the mist has burned off I’m feeling better than I did.

We’re eating eggs when Dan finally appears. I make a split second of eye contact and give him a quick smile. I’m not good at this kind of stuff; I’m already sweaty and my eggs are stuck in the back of my throat.

“Good morning,” he says to the table and pulls out a chair. “How was the party?”

Shawn groans and rests his head in his giant hands. “I probably could’ve done without the last nine drinks.”

“You’re such a lightweight,” says a bright-eyed Jamie, despite the fact that she’s a third of his size and, from what I hear, drank just as much. She turns to Dan. “So what’d you do? I can’t believe you didn’t come.”

“I read a little and went to sleep,” Dan says, and takes a bite of eggs.

“Dan? Is that you?” Jamie teases. “How old are you again—sixty? I thought you were thirty-three.”

Dan chews his eggs and doesn’t take the bait. No one asks why I didn’t go, at least. I guess I’ve been so antisocial that it’s not suspicious.

By the time Shawn’s fixed a problem with the trailer hitch and we’ve said goodbye to Quebec, it’s late morning. We pull out, girls in the van, guys in the truck. It was Ana’s idea, and I know she suggested it to spare me an awkward drive.

We find a truck full of what’s probably a year’s worth of sugar at the Ben and Jerry’s factory in Waterbury, after killing the few Lexers in the parking lot. We take as many sacks as we can fit, but we’ll have to make another trip to get it all. It’s late afternoon by the time we’ve stocked up on gas and made our way into Stowe.

The quaint stores look the same as they ever did—except for the broken glass, garbage and human remains that litter the streets. The weather has worn the bodies down to bone covered with scraps of fabric. Liz tries to weave around the bodies, but the crunching is unavoidable.

“Stop for a sec?” Ana asks. Her sights are locked on a yellow clapboard store, and she opens the van’s door. “We’re going shopping.”

Ana saunters back to the truck and points at the signs, one of which says
Boutique
. But she’s purposely picked a boutique-slash-gourmet foods store, so there’s a reason to go inside besides clothes. A Lexer rounds the corner and heads for the voices that argue behind us. Jamie beats me to the sidewalk, slices her machete into its head and uses what looks to be an abandoned jacket to wipe her blade. The street is quiet after that. The good thing about pods is that it seems you’re less likely to run into smaller groups. The bad thing about pods is everything else.

“We’re going,” I hear Ana say. “Send Caleb and Toby down while we’re in there.” She strides to the boutique’s door and stops with a hand on the knob. “C’mon!”

The brass bell dings when we enter. It’s completely untouched. The walls are lined with handmade soaps, gourmet goodies and Vermont souvenirs. Jamie slides behind the long counter on the back wall. The wooden shelves behind her are loaded with jars of jam and chutney. Some have burst from the cold, but many are intact. In front of her are large glass jars of candy.

“Help you ladies with something?” she asks.

It all looks so delicious that I don’t know where to begin. The gummy worms are rock hard, but they taste perfect. Jamie unwraps a tube of Smarties and lets the entire row of round candies fall into her mouth. I follow her lead and then cram a Mary Jane in after them.

“This is awesome,” Jamie says. “We need to take all of it.”

My teeth are glued together with peanutty goodness, so I nod. The kids are going to scream with pleasure when they see this haul. Zeke will kill us, or at least bore us to death with lectures on tooth decay, but I don’t care. The joy on Bits’s face will be worth it.

“You have to see this!” Ana calls from an opening off to the side.

I tear myself away from the candy and step into a room full of clothes. The walls are lined with gauzy shirts and skirts, and the racks hold spring dresses.

Ana closes her eyes while she glides her hand along the fabrics. She’d just started her career as a fashion buyer before the world ended. Saying she likes clothes is a bit of an understatement.

“Look at this one!” she says.

The dress is light orange with gold embroidery on the skirt. She pulls a black and white-striped dress off the rack and holds it under my chin. It looks like it’s from another world—a world where you don’t have to wear elbow-length leather gloves and boots. A world where you can skip down the street on a beautiful summer’s day and never once have to glance behind you.

“This would look great on you,” Ana says.

It could be from the 60’s, with off the shoulder sleeves that form a deep V-neck and a gathered skirt. Ana slings dresses over her arm. When the clothes are higher than her head, she leaves for the van. Jamie and I bag up the soaps and what’s left of the food, followed by every last scrap of candy, while Ana makes a return trip to the children’s section.

The front door is open, and we listen to the guys argue with Ana about the necessity of the clothes. I’m inclined to agree with them, but I don’t know why they bother—she’s going to get her way. Sure enough, when Jamie and I step outside, the clothes are in the van and Ana wears a triumphant smile. We lug our bags across the lot.

Shawn opens the van’s door with a resigned sigh. “More clothes?”

“No,” Jamie says. “Food, soap and candy. There are more bags inside.”

The word
candy
elicits a response not unlike when a Lexer spots a human. Dan, Peter and Shawn dig through the bags. We’re not much better than the kids. Dan bites off the end of a candy stick and winks at me. The heat of the sun is nothing compared to the flames in my cheeks, and I escape to get the rest of the bags while I try not to think about last night. Whenever I do, I’m filled with a mixture of guilt and desire to do it again. The guilt is winning, but it’s a close race.

Toby and Caleb pull alongside the van. Toby leans out the window. “We found a fully-loaded RV. All gassed up, keys in the ignition, generator, hot water—all still working. We should camp tonight and hit the other stores in the morning.”

It’s an hour’s drive to the solar power company that, as of last summer, had plenty of equipment we need. The sun’s still up, but it’s early evening. Traveling at night with a heavy trailer and no idea of what’s ahead of us is a lot less appealing than hot showers and beds.

We park the RV in an open field surrounded by barbed wire. I emerge from the shower to find Ana sitting on the bed, holding my clothes hostage. The orange dress she wears makes her skin glow and catches the gold highlights in her hair and eyes.

She wiggles the black and white dress in the air. “We’re playing dress up.”

“No way,” I say. Not only am I not in the mood, but I feel too exposed out here in something so flimsy. “I’m supposed to be able to kill things in that?”

“We’re in an RV, nothing’s going to happen! You can change quick. Please?” She pouts, but that doesn’t work on me. She tugs on my towel and attempts to look sad. “Pretty please? Jamie has one on already.”

It is a pretty dress. And if I don’t wear it, I’ll spend the rest of my life hearing about The Time You Didn’t Wear That Dress. She squeals when I take it and order her out. When I enter the living area, I get friendly whistles and catcalls that make me want to retreat to the bedroom. Jamie’s hair is down and her dress is green to match her eyes. Ana knows what she’s doing when it comes to personal shopping.

“You look purty,” I say to her. We don’t often get glimpses of what people might have been like before we all wore boots and holsters.

“Thanks. So do you. Although I’m not sure why I let Ana talk me into this.”

Liz wears her own clothes, of course, and she says, “Suckers.”